Opening Alderman Library was typically routine for Will Wyatt. As an undergraduate at the University of Virginia, he’d walk through the stacks early in the morning, turning on lights before students started filing in to study. There was only darkness in front of him as he flipped switches on a mezzanine floor.
Then, one morning in 2015, he saw something he had never seen before.
“A short, older woman with long fluffy white hair appeared out of the stacks,” Wyatt, now a public services manager for the main library, said. “She just looked up at me and said, ‘It's very quiet up here. This would be a great place to murder somebody.’”
Wyatt just laughed nervously and continued flipping the lights on as he moved down the stacks. He said neither he nor any other library employees saw the woman leave the building or has seen her ever since.
Initially, he wasn’t sure what he had seen. He told a fellow student worker about the figure that he had come across, but he felt “silly” telling his supervisor. Plus, he’d never really believed in ghosts. He had never experienced anything like that morning in 2015 before.
“I thought that somehow, someone had gotten into the library,” Wyatt said.
But only staff had access to the library before opening, through special cards that they swiped to enter the building. Eventually, he concluded that he had seen a ghost.